• QUOTES

Nicola Larini: “I am very happy with the good results I had in Valencia and with the fourth position in the Championship standings. Pau will be a different story, because of the 45 kg ballast I will have, but I must say I prefer to have such extra weight in a street circuit than in a normal one. In a permanent circuit it is almost impossible to compensate the 5-6 tenths of a second you lose because of the ballast, but on an urban track it is not quite the same. It will all depend on how the car will perform and feel on a track that is new to all cars and almost all drivers. As I tend to like city tracks, I feel pretty confident that things will go well for me. I hope that on Thursday we will have the possibility to study the track, in a street car if possible or at least on a bike. I am very motivated and confident.”

Alain Menu: “As a driver you never like to deliberately fall back down the order and see others take “your” points, but the way the WTCC works that is exactly what you need to do from time to time. Pau is a street track and on street courses qualifying is of vital importance if you want to have a shot at a podium place. There’s little or no run-off in the corners, so overtaking maneuvers will be few and far between, unless you want to risk destroying your car. I hope my knowledge of Pau from my singleseater days can help, plus the fact a number of our fiercest competitors are now slowly reaching the maximum penalty weight and that two of these have been given a 10-place grid penalty should make this race a pretty good shot at adding a win to Chevrolet’s tally.”

Rob Huff: “I said that I was going to Valencia for a win, so I’ll have to say that again for Pau, I guess. Can you believe that a driver gets crashed out of the race in the first corner three years in a row? The good thing of it all will be that I’ll be running at base weight, so if I can qualify well I should have a fair shot at a podium finish. I have never been to Pau, but that goes for most of the drivers, so I will be on equal footing with most of them. The main difference will be that I also want that Louis Chevrolet watch!”

Mark Busfield: “We stayed in Valencia for an extra day of testing; validating some more revised ’07 parts on the car. Alain drove Rob’s car, which was involved in the first race accident. It will need a complete overhaul, but for the test purposes it still did the job perfectly. In Pau, Rob will use the team’s spare car, which was already built up as a race car before the team had left for Valencia, just in case. After Valencia, the cars went back to the workshops for a rebuild and will be shaken down at Silverstone on Monday before being shipped to Pau. Being a street circuit, it means lots of tight corners and rather high kerbs, so overtaking will not be easy. Qualifying will therefore be more important than ever, so it is good that we get an extra 15 minutes of qualifying to avoid mishaps like we saw at Macau last year.”

Eric Nève: “The official slogan of the WTCC is “Real Cars, Real Racing”, so what better place to take the championship that to real streets where the daily rat race is run. Pau is stacked with history, so obviously we at Chevrolet will be looking at adding our name to the winner’s list. It won’t be easy of course, the Chevrolets being the heaviest cars in the field now, but we will have a chance of doing well here. As we have seen in the past, a lot will depend on qualifying. In any case, street races are exactly the ones that reflect best the product we run. With the races literally coming to the people, rather than the other way around, the championship opens up further to the fans. With the open paddock, approachable drivers and team, and the overall friendly atmosphere, we should see many thousands of fans experience the Chevrolet philosophy at the “Monaco of Touring Cars.”